Iraq's Mystery Weapon

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Iraq's Mystery Weapon

This is a strange one. In an interview with Al Jazeera, one of Saddam's right-hand men claimed that "US forces used neutron and phosphorus bombs during their assault on Baghdad airport before the April 9 capture of the Iraqi capital."

Saifeddin Fulayh Hassan Taha al-Rawi is the former head of Saddam Hussein’s Republican Guard and the Jack of Clubs in the Iraqi most wanted deck of cards. He's currently on the run with a million-dollar bounty on this head.

Now, you may dismiss his claim out of hand because:

*a) it comes from Al Jazeera *

b) al-Rawi is a desperate thug who just wants to make trouble for the US

or, more rationally,

*c) it’s a completely ridiculous story whatever the source *

...but let’s just hold one a minute and see if there might be some useful information in there.

Now al-Rawi may simply wish to discredit the US, but he’s picked a bizarre choice of slurs. Phosphorus weapons though contentious are legal and are already acknowledged to have been used in Iraq.

Aneutron bomb is a variety of nuclear fission-fusion warhead optimized to produce the maximum amount of high-energy neutrons – but current designs will still produce an explosion in the kiloton range. This would be extremely conspicuous, seen and heard for many miles around.It would certainly a massive footprint in terms of radiation, which simply is not there.

So if it wasn't a neutron bomb, what was he describing?

In the interview, Al Jazeera recordthis comment: "The bombs annihilated soldiers but left the buildings and infrastructure at the airport intact, he added."

That'sbombs, plural. So there was no single giant explosion, but a series of smaller explosions which somehow killed the occupants of buildings without destroying the structures themselves. Interestingly, there is a weapon in the US arsenal designed to do exactly that.

The AGM-114N Metal Augmented Charge version of the Hellfire missile is “designed to produce higher sustained blast pressure in multi-room structures, and other confined spaces.

On May 15th 2003, just a few weeks after the action at Baghdad Airport, Donald Rumsfeld praised the new weapon, and quoted as saying the new warhead "can take out the first floor of a building without damaging the floors above, and is capable of reaching around corners, striking enemy forces that hide in caves or bunkers and hardened multi-room complexes.''

Although officially described as 'metal augmented' or even 'hyperbaric,' the new warhead is not distinguishable from thermobaricweapons which produce the same sort of enhanced blast with a lower overpressure and longer duration for more destructive effects. Like many thermobarics, the AGM-114N used finely powdered aluminum. The military are generally quiet about thermobarics because they have received such bad press. Human Rights Watch criticized them because they "kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area."

The thermal effects generated by this type of weapon would also explain why al-Rawi thought phosphorus was used.

It would certainly make sense to use hyperbaric/thermobaric weapons when attacking an airport. It would help ensure that there are no craters on the runways or unexploded warheads lying around(thermobarics are generally much more stable) so that the airport can be used as soon as possible by friendly forces.

Whether or not thermobarics were used, it’s quite clear that al-Rawi for one had no idea what hit him*….but it wasn’t a neutron bomb*.